The Core provides the mechanism for integrating and coordinating the interdisciplinary approaches to drug abuse research at VCU. The core also serves to facilitate communication among all components of the Center. The core provides shared resources in addition to fostering interactions among all drug abuse researchers at MCV/VCU. The core consists of the following four components: 1) Administrative Component which serves to foster drug abuse research by scheduling drug abuse seminars, attending to travel for invited speakers, organizing regular meetings for participating faculty and preparing manuscripts. 2) Instrumentation Component which supports the mass spectrometry facility that is essential for many of the drug abuse research projects at the University. 3) Synthetic Component which will be responsible for preparing needed drugs for the other researchers in the Center. Their efforts will include both synthesis of new analogs as well as identification of available sources to obtain compounds already synthesized. 4) Statistical Component, the members of which will be involved in developing protocols and data analysis for both basic preclinical and clinical studies. A major advantage of a Center core is that it provides shared resources that are more economical and that are sometimes not available unless they are shared. Of course, the core also affords the opportunity for researchers from many different disciplines to become familiar with areas of research that will complement their own endeavors. The result has been a stimulation of the interdisciplinary approach to drug abuse research at VCU.